Indian Influence in Past and Future

This post was generated to an answer of a question on Quora. Innocent looking question was, "When will India rise up and rule the world like it did in the ancient times?"

First thing is India never ruled the world. We had our sphere of influence because of our trade and cultural links. Whole of Indo-China (Far East Asia including Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia etc.) had Indian culture to varying extent. Buddhism was greatest export of Indian culture. Powerful empires like Srivijaya empire in Indo-China was very close to India culturally.

Please remember India never colonised any country. Wherever our ancestors went they carried their culture of tolerance and value system base on dignity of life. Today in post colonial world everybody is talking of these things and that is good for whole humanity.

Here it is to be understood very clearly if one country is prosperous and powerful, world will be influenced automatically. We are moving in that direction slowly coming out of rut and degradation that British Raj brought to us. We have many people with low self esteem and "Gora Sahib mentality" ruling top echelons of Indian intelligentsia for almost 70 years in post independence India. But with advent of new nationalistic government in Delhi things are again moving in right direction. Evacuation in Yemen is telling example of extension of this soft power of India. And this soft power will carry positive influence of India across the world again.

So in short we never ruled the world, we never wanted to rule the world but have influenced world positively and trying to get into that position again. may be it will take 50 more years and before that we need to sort out our problem of caste system, division of society, educate our people, remove poverty in the process and then we shall be very much there again.